The
Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans held a "Seal Forum" in St.
John's, Newfoundland, on November 7-8, 2005, to elicit advice from "stakeholders"
regarding the formation of a new multi-year "Atlantic Seal Management
Plan." I attended the forum representing the Grey Seal Conservation Society
(GSCS). Below are my comments submitted to DFO following the forum for
inclusion in the seal forum report. Prior to the seal forum, the same
concerns were communicated to Geoff Regan, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans,
Canada, in a letter dated October 20,
2005. When a response is received from DFO or Mr. Regan on this matter,
I will add it to this website. - Debbie MacKenzie, November 21, 2005

The Grey Seal Conservation Society (GSCS)
appreciates your providing us with the opportunity to participate in the 2005
Seal Forum. DFO made us feel very welcome at this event – thank you. The
following are our comments on the matters discussed at the seal forum:

1. GSCS opposes the seal hunt plan because marine
predators overall are severely depleted, and the ecosystem-stabilizing effect of
large predators is thereby being lost.

The Grey Seal Conservation Society (GSCS) opposes
the proposed commercial seal hunt plan (for harp seals, grey seals and hooded
seals) in Atlantic Canada, in favour of the inclusion of all seal species in a
moratorium on the commercial take of large marine fish predators. This position
is based on concern arising from the recent virtual disappearance of all large
predatory ocean fish, and DFO’s obligation to use an “ecosystem based approach”
to managing living resources (1,2).

In suggesting TACs for the seal hunt, and in
forecasting the hunt’s “sustainability” at the seal forum, DFO has unfortunately
relied only on a single species modeling approach, like that considered in the
Report of the Eminent Panel on Seal Management (2001). This approach is
currently inadequate, however, because it does not constitute “ecosystem based
management,” which DFO is now obliged to use under the Oceans Act.

Along with the seal biologists, marine ecologists
should have been consulted on the matter of seal hunting, with a view to
understanding the context in which seals are living today, how seals relate to
the current state of the ecosystem, recent changes, and the importance of
maintaining the natural structure of the food web. Dramatic unexpected shifts
have recently been observed in the ecological base that supports seals (fish,
invertebrates, plankton), yet DFO has inappropriately continued to offer an
optimistic, simplistic assumption that seal populations can be projected to
thrive and multiply into the future as they did in years past, when seals were
supported by a vastly different and more productive food web. Unfortunately,
this is the same tunnel-vision management approach that preceded the
“unexpected” cod collapse.

The transition from the old style fisheries
management to ecosystem-based management is clearly not easy for scientists (3),
yet DFO is committed and obliged to figure out how this can be done in practice.
Ecologists can help fisheries managers adapt to the new realities and to
incorporate new scientific insights in their work, and indeed, DFO ecologists
have recently clarified what a modern “ecosystem approach” to fisheries
management should look like. DFO’s move toward an “ecosystem-based” management
approach involves the identification of measurable, precautionary “ecosystem
objectives” (4,5), and then it involves the consideration of these objectives
when making fisheries management decisions. It is becoming very clear what must
be done, and DFO would do well to make the leap to genuine “ecosystem-based
management” of the seal hunt at this time, in part because this hunt is such an
anomaly (a hunt on a top predator) in an era when fisheries targets overall are
sliding ever lower in the food web (now mainly crustaceans).

A top priority of ecosystem-based management is
the maintenance of all “components” and all “functions” that occur naturally in
the ecosystem, and it is acknowledged that a considerable overlap of different
species can be involved in maintaining a given functional role in the ecosystem.
Such species are described as sharing a “trophic level” or a feeding position in
the food web.

An objective related to the goal of “maintaining
trophic structure” has been identified by DFO as “preserve traditional role of
top predators.” (6) Seals function as top predators, but seals are now in the
unprecedented situation of being the last remaining major players involved in
functioning at their trophic level, in contrast to past circumstances when seals
shared the top predator functional role with a great number of large predatory
fish of various species. (7, 8)

An extremely worrisome, near-total disappearance
of all large predatory fish has occurred in Atlantic Canada, and this has been
linked to fishing. To make matters worse, spontaneous rebuilding of these
predators is not occurring as expected. Seals are unique in being the only top
marine predators that have demonstrated any degree of population resilience in
recent years. Despite increases in some Atlantic seal populations, however, the
strength of the top predator functional role overall has declined markedly. (7,
8)

Significantly, DFO scientists have recently
concluded that the loss of the natural ecological function of large-bodied
predators has already triggered an unexpected cascading effect that has induced
a “catastrophic” alteration in the food web. (9) The changes induced by massive
predator removal are viewed as “catastrophic” because they include a decline in
plankton and the generalized starvation of bottom-dwelling fish (9, 10). This
new insight gives an urgent reason to ban the take of any more large-bodied
predators. DFO’s commitment to “preserve top predators” does not therefore arise
only from an aesthetic, sentimental or moral belief of Canadians that we should
permit large ocean animals to survive into the future, but it also arises from a
scientific recognition that it is dangerous to the health of many other marine
species (including prey fish) for the numbers of fish predators in the system to
be drastically reduced. Unexpected, counter-intuitive perhaps, but this is where
the weight of evidence points nevertheless.

DFO ecologists understand what management measures
will be needed to conserve a “trophic level”:

“Regarding trophic structure…it may be necessary
to set overall catch limits for aggregates of species based on their trophic
level. Once the overall catch is met, all fisheries for species in that
aggregate would be halted.” (O’Boyle et al, 2004)

It is widely acknowledged that the “aggregate” of
top ocean predators has been reduced to a level below 10% of its historic
abundance, (11, 12, 13) and it seems this reduction has already had a
significant negative impact on the ecosystem (7, 9, 11). The precautionary
approach, “erring on the side of caution” in this situation, should therefore
dictate that predator removal now be halted due to the risk of causing further
ecosystem-destabilizing effects. Therefore, commercial seal hunting should be
stopped at this time. No more top predators should be removed. This is the basis
on which the Grey Seal Conservation Society (GSCS) opposes all commercial seal
hunting that DFO has suggested be included in the new Atlantic Seal Management
Plan.

2. Ecosystem Considerations

In the 2005 Seal Forum Workbook, DFO correctly
identified “ecosystem considerations” as an “aspect of the seal hunt needing
improvement.” But despite this, and Kevin Stringer’s closing remark to the forum
that “There is no question that DFO is moving toward an ecosystem approach”, DFO
failed to clearly communicate the meaning of “ecosystem approach” to the forum
participants. This point of ongoing misunderstanding seems likely to be related
to DFO’s failure to include ecologists or “ecosystem” scientists in consultation
on the seal hunt plan and the seal forum.

It became clear during the forum that confusion
existed regarding the practical meaning of the phrase “ecosystem-based
management.” This was the argument advanced by GSCS, as described above, as the
reason not to approve any more commercial catches of seals, yet the exact same
phrase was used by members of the fishing industry as an argument in favour of
culling seals in a “cod recovery” strategy. The reason for the fishermen’s
mistakenly equating “ecosystem based management” with “predator control” can be
easily seen: because “seal predation” was the one major topic suggested by DFO
under “ecosystem considerations” in the forum workbook (Section 2).

By now, DFO should have explained more of the
truth about recent ocean ecosystem changes to the fishermen. Fishermen who
participated in recent consultation with DFO scientists regarding “cod recovery”
reported that they had not been told that a significant, sustained decline in
zooplankton abundance on the Newfoundland shelf has been observed, and that this
bodes poorly for the future growth of fish. Nor has it been explained to the
fishermen, apparently, that the recently observed trend of poor condition in
mature groundfish is something that has long been associated by scientists with
an unusually LOW level of predation, rather than with an unusually HIGH level of
predation (whether from fishing or from natural predators).

DFO has not done enough to dispel the myth that
natural predators are “damaging” fish stocks. While scientists have stated this
is not their conclusion, they have done a poor job of convincing the fishing
industry on this point, or of reducing the fishermen’s mistrust of seals. In
fact, DFO scientists still seem to act to perpetuate the myth of the “danger”
presented by seals as they have intensified their efforts to quantify the
consumption of fish by seals. The underlying assumption of DFO’s seal research
program seems to be a belief that the consumption of fish by seals is inherently
harmful to fish stocks.

“Even if the Department was to contemplate a cull
to reduce seal predation, the number of seals that would have to be taken to
have a significant effect on fish populations would be enormous and would
undermine the current seal harvest. For example, under one Eminent Panel
scenario based on their bio-economic analysis, there would have to be an
additional harvest of either 750,000 seals in a single year, 150,000 additional
young seals per year for five years, or a cull of 150,000 adult females to
provide about 1,500t of commercially usable fish (not just cod).” (2005 Seal
Forum Workbook)

The assumption that removing seals will work to
the benefit of their prey fish cannot be justified today in the face of recent
evidence that significant predator removal can cause broad-scale ecosystem
damage. DFO needs to communicate this fact to the fishermen. Senior DFO
scientist, Jake Rice, has cautioned against planning predator culls as
“ecosystem objectives”:

“The consequences of management manipulations of
trophic systems are highly unpredictable. Therefore, only under conditions of
exceptionally good understanding would there be a scientific basis for forming
Ecosystem Objectives which might lead to planned major reductions of predators
with the intent of producing specific benefits to populations lower in the food
web.” (5)

Ecologists now have a good understanding that
while predator removal may or may not result in a brief increase in prey
abundance, the practice eventually causes ecosystem deterioration that can
ultimately inhibit the production of prey. Ample evidence exists that the
massive level of marine predator removal already accomplished by the fishing
industry in Atlantic Canada has not worked to the ultimate benefit of the prey
fish. The “predator removal” experiment by fishermen has in fact already been
carried on for centuries with the broad-scale removal of all large fish, and at
this time the fishing industry’s predator removal strategy can be seen to have
achieved near-total success. However, natural predator removal plainly does not
work to improve fish production – as unexpectedly, it seems to have had the
opposite effect.

DFO might help fishermen understand the folly of
their proposed final predator-removal strategy to rebuild cod stocks if
fishermen were reminded that cod were traditionally the main predators of
capelin in Newfoundland, but that the elimination of cod apparently has not
worked to the benefit of capelin, because rather than growing larger the capelin
stock has unexpectedly become smaller in the absence of its major predator. It
is not remotely possible that the current seal population is eating more capelin
than cod and other now-absent large fish once consumed on the Newfoundland
banks. Much does not add up under the traditionally accepted view of how the
ocean works. Hence, as noted in the seal forum workbook, “complexities abound in
the seal-predation puzzle”…

3. The “seal-predation puzzle”: What is the full
impact of the presence of seals in the sea? Predators? Scavengers? Nutrient-cyclers?…What
is the full expected impact of their removal?

The “complexities” in the “seal-predation puzzle”
should be urgently addressed by science. In its recent seal research program,
DFO has approached the issue only by trying to obtain more accurate estimates of
numbers of seals and the amount of fish they eat. To this end, DFO’s seal diet
studies have become quite sophisticated. However, researchers have failed to
account for a serious shortcoming in this line of study. This is the false
assumption that fish flesh eaten by seals always represents otherwise viable
fish, fish that might have survived to support a human fishery. It is important
to note that in estimating the “impact” of seals, scientists have made no
distinction between the roles of “predator” and “scavenger,” although seals
perform both these roles when they eat fish. While confusion remains about the
desirability of “predator” removal, “scavenger removal” is clearly undesirable
because this presents an environmental risk, as dying/dead fish that are not
eaten promptly by scavengers may undergo bacterial decomposition (rot) on bottom
instead, a process that can degrade water quality.

The ecological demand for scavengers to consume
spent adult fish is likely to have increased in Atlantic Canadian waters
recently, as the natural life expectancy for virtually all fish species has
fallen. This change has been imposed on fish by a limited availability of food
in their environment (9), and this is a major determinant of when adult fish
become due for recycling by scavengers. The fishing industry can do nothing to
replace the important scavenging piece-work service that natural predators
perform in the ocean as they selectively consume spent fish.

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the exceptionally
deep-diving hooded seals may be the only predators/scavengers that can still
function effectively today in the Laurentian Trough. The oxygen content of the
bottom water in much of this area has recently fallen to levels too low for
other consumers, such as predatory fish, to survive. Therefore, it may
realistically be that the only air-breathing fish-eaters capable of diving to
the bottom in this area, the hooded seals, represent the single natural
ecosystem element that can still work to slow the spread of this “dead zone” by
eating fish that die there. This illustrates one subtle dynamic by which seals
help maintain the health of the ocean environment.

It has often been observed by scientists and
fishermen that adult seals may consume tons of fish for each seal pup they
produce, but this process has too-simplistically been imagined only as a “loss”
inflicted on the fish stocks. Questioning more deeply, it should become of
interest to scientists to follow the trail of where the bulk of the fish eaten
by seals actually goes. Seal excretions are tightly linked to natural processes
involving marine invertebrates, which ultimately lead to a more rapid cycling of
fish-derived nutrients into plankton-stimulation than would occur in the absence
of seals. This is another subtle, positive impact of seals on ocean health.

In its seal-ecosystem research, DFO should now
shift the focus toward taking a comprehensive look at the intertwined ecology of
seals, fish and other ocean elements, toward understanding the full
“complexities” in the “puzzle.” Before another seal hunt is approved, those who
would promote the seal hunt should be required to meet the “burden of proof”
that top ocean predators can still be commercially hunted today without risking
further detrimental effects to the ecosystem. This is very unlikely to be
proven, which provides the reason why a “precautionary” moratorium should be
placed on the commercial harvest of seals or any other top ocean predators in
the interim.

A logical objective scaling process, similar to
DFO’s recent “Objectives Based Fisheries Management” (OBFM) approach to seal
hunting, could be used to assess the appropriateness of the seal hunt in an
ecosystem context. The major difference would be that the conservation limit
reference points would be determined on the basis of conservation requirements
for the trophic level, or “aggregate of species,” of which seals make up one
part. Either overall abundance estimates of animals occupying the seals’ trophic
level, or biomass estimates of all animals in this category, might be used as
measurable reference points to trigger conservation actions for the trophic
level as a whole. Such an approach would constitute logical, practical
“ecosystem-based fisheries management,” and this very approach has recently been
suggested by DFO ecologists and others.

If the seal populations were assessed under this
“ecosystem” method, then a current “conservation” issue involving these animals
(i.e. their trophic level) would immediately become clear, despite relatively
high current numbers of seals. The marine top predator trophic level in Atlantic
Canada is currently well below 10% of its historic biomass, or its historic
abundance, whichever measurement you prefer. If DFO were to set conservation
limit reference points on an ecosystem basis, then an “all removals stopped”
management strategy would now be implemented for seals.

DFO must make the leap to “ecosystem-based
fisheries management,” and the seal hunt may be the best place to start.
Incontrovertible evidence supports the conclusion that the seals’ trophic level
is currently severely depleted – therefore the decision to conserve seals on
“ecosystem” grounds can be made and justified by scientists with no uncertainty
at all, whereas the situation might be stickier in other instances.

The rationale given here for halting the harvest
of seals in Canada can also be found in various other scientific sources:

“In an ecosystem-based fishery management plan (EBFMP),
the impact of a management action would be assessed with respect to the
ecosystem as well as individual species. It is entirely possible that a fishery
could be considered overfished within the ecosystem plan (ecosystem overfishing)
when it is not overfished in a single-species context. This can occur when a
forage species that serves as a prey resource for marine predators is also the
target of a fishery or when overfishing of large predators causes food web
shifts.” (Pikitch et al., 2004)

5. Future Consultation

DFO has gone to considerable lengths to convince
the public that the seal hunt in Canada is conducted humanely. Most recently in
this regard, we received at the seal forum the report of the “Independent
Veterinarian’s Working Group on the Canadian Harp Seal Hunt.” Similar attention
now needs to be paid by DFO to proving to the public that the seal hunt is truly
“sustainable” and that the management of the seal hunt is “ecosystem-based” and
is following the principle of “erring on the side of caution.”

GSCS recommends that DFO act now to convene a
panel of impartial experts in marine predator ecology and ecosystem-based
fishery management for the purpose of eliciting their advice on how ecosystem
considerations should be incorporated into planning the Canadian seal hunt. It
is advised that DFO partner with external conservation organizations in
organizing this panel. “Erring on the side of caution” in this matter will mean
withholding approval for any new seal management plan until the report of the
recommended panel is completed.

Finally, DFO should implement a regular, formal
mechanism to allow stakeholders outside the fishing industry to become involved
in providing advice to scientists on the management of natural resources. Along
the same vein, it would be useful at this time if DFO were to initiate the
organization of an “Environmentalists and Scientists Research Society” patterned
after the “Fishermen and Scientists Research Society” that has existed for the
past decade.